Children, and even adults, enjoy playing with and collecting toy vehicles. Children in particular enjoy playing with toy vehicles that can stimulate the children's senses to n allow them to creatively use their imagination. In general, these toy vehicles have a somewhat utilitarian shape which is visually pleasing and/or stimulating to the children. Additionally, such toy vehicles usually comprise a body portion having a combination of areas of various colors, designs, and relative transparencies and opacities.
Some toy vehicles may include, for example, motors for causing the vehicles to move, sound generators for simulating, for example, engines sounds, horns or the like, and lights for adding realism or for providing a pleasing visual effect.
Other toy vehicles, such as automobile models, are merely exact replicas of the actual automobile they model. These models typically include as much detail as practical in the body design to make the models appear authentic. Yet these models lack features which simulate motion, sight or sound. While these toy automobiles have a pleasing visual effect, they generally are not much as fun to play with and are not therefore less interesting to many children.
As discussed above, some toy vehicles include various types of lights. These lights are usually located within the interior of the toy vehicle, and as such the toys must be provided with at least one transparent or translucent portion for permitting the light to be emitted therefrom. In general, these toys have bodies molded or otherwise formed of an opaque material, such as a suitable plastic. To form the transparent or translucent portions, appropriately placed holes or openings or cutouts are defined in the intended vicinity of the lights or windows, as for example by cutting or by providing appropriate openings in the body as molded or formed. Transparent or translucent material is the typically inserted into these cutouts and is secured frictionally or by an adhesive. This method of manufacture is unduly complex, time consuming, expensive and inefficient.